The present invention relates to a liquid phase counter making it possible to form the phase diagram of a partly liquid and transparent mixture. These diagrams are more particularly used in the oil industry, in the treatment of ores in an aqueous medium, in cosmetology, etc.
For example, in the field of oil, the counter according to the invention is used in the assisted recovery of petrol or gasoline. Since the first oil crisis in 1973, oil companies have attempted to improve the gasoline extraction efficiency, which is limited to 35% for technical and economic reasons. The process used consists of injecting into the oil well a monophase micro-emulsion, which, during the flushing of the well becomes a three-phase system. This micro-emulsion is constituted by a mixture containing at least a surfactant, pure or salt water, a hydrocarbon and optionally a cosurfactant, e.g. an alcohol. As a function of the proportions of each of the constituents of the mixture, the system can be at equilibrium, single, two, three or four-phase. Therefore, it is necessary to make a choice from among the mixtures so as to only retain those leading to an optimized three-phase system, which is the only one which can be used in the assisted recovery of gasoline.
No theoretical method is known for the a priori forming of the phase diagram and for consequently determining the mixtures which are of interest. Only the experimental study of a large number of mixtures makes it possible to select the useful mixtures, i.e. three-phase et equilibrium.
According to the prior art, the phase diagram of a mixture is produced manually. For this diagram to be accurate, it is necessary to plot the number of phases of a large number of points, which is very long. For example, the plotting of 15,000 points of this diagram takes several uninterrupted work years. Apart from the slowness, this process of producing a phase diagram is relatively inaccurate, the composition of each manually prepared mixture being itself of limited precision.